Dear Shooting Friends

With clubs and ranges shut, and us all in isolation, its not good for target shooting, but there are things we can do to continue our sport.

My wife and I now in the old fart category do not shoot 10 mt standing air rifle any more, we just do coaching, and we now just shoot small bore and full bore prone rifle. With the spare time now we have reorganised our 10 mt home air range so we can shoot air rifle prone on it, so can continue to practice prone. In fact the wife who has shot it several times now says that its great training, no excuse for the tens not being 10.9's, and the lack of recoil helps to analyse technique better.

So what can you do for shooting training any discipline, air rifle and air pistol, small bore and full bore rifle?

1. Dry firing, (aiming and clicking the trigger), set up a proportional aiming mark at what ever distance you can get. You can print proportional aiming marks for all the ISSF disciplines from the Scatt programme tools, you can download the Scatt programme free online. Then set your rifle or pistol to dry fire if it has a setting (most target air guns do), if not just pull on the un cocked trigger, small and full bores you can fully cock and use a snap cap to not damage the firing pin.
Dry fire with an objective, (aiming, sight picture, hold, follow through, etc) best to pick one at a time, rather than the whole process, be precise and analytical and you will get more advantage than actual shooting.

2. With air guns, shoot live, if you don't have 10 mts then shoot 6 yards, if you don't have 6 yds shoot what you have! The standard garage part of my range is 5 yds, perfectly adequate to train, and actually the lost yard makes very little difference.
If you have 6 yds shoot the MPL league at home, maybe they will accept 5 yds with an allowance? And also maybe accept non MPL target guns, PCP's etc? If enough of you are interested?

3. Shoot dry fire on Scatt at any distance and and any discipline, we shoot 300 mt full bore rifle at home at 5 yds, (dry fire!). This is the expensive option if you don't have a Scatt, but this is likely to go on a long time, and the going price for Scatt USB's is £500 and there are always ones for sale, and even after they are still sellable. Just remember that its a training aid, not an electronic target, a 10.9 is nice but if it was pointed there it just shows your scatt set up was good, to get the best out of it, look much more at the "shape" of the shot, and there are enough back screens to keep even the most ardent geek amused!

My coaching book is sold through the NSRA shop, the shop is now closed, and also the NSRA online shop is closed for the duration, so the book is currently unavailable, but if any one would like coaching help they are welcome to email me on robin.carter80@ntlworld.com, and I will do my best to answer any queries.

So that's my contribution, any of you are welcome to make sensible suggestions.

Have Fun, and remember to wash you hands after reading this post.

Robin